Allow for certain amounts of additional spending for "program
integrity" initiatives aimed at reducing the amount of improper
benefit payments;

Make changes to the Pell Grant and student loan programs;

Require that the House of Representatives and the Senate vote
on a joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to
the Constitution;

Establish a procedure to increase the debt limit by $400
billion initially and procedures that would allow the limit to be
raised further in two additional steps, for a cumulative increase
of between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion;

Reinstate and modify certain budget process rules;

Create a Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit
Reduction to propose further deficit reduction, with a stated
goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings
over 10 years; and

Establish automatic procedures for reducing spending by as
much as $1.2 trillion if legislation originating with the new
joint select committee does not achieve such savings.

Full disclosure: I want this deal to pass. I want any deal to
pass unless it actually involves human sacrifice. All taxes,
all spending, clean bill—whatever. As long as raises the debt
ceiling. If it does some deficit reduction, even better, but
not strictly necessary. I am mad at Republicans who are
refusing to vote for it. I am mad at Democrats who are doing
same.

And no, "We cannot, under any circumstances, hand the GOP a
political win" is no better a reason for shutting down the
government than "We cannot, under any circumstances, raise
taxes."

But that aside, this is, to my mind, a pretty decent bill. It
could certainly be better—among other things, why focus cuts on
discretionary spending? But it's roughly balanced between
Democratic and Republican spending priorities, and while one can
question whether the future cuts will really happen, they seem
more likely to happen than if we'd just passed a clean debt
ceiling bill. So, much better than nothing.

The Democratic complaints that we had to settle for cuts in
military spending, rather than tax hikes, seems very strange to
me. Is raising taxes an affirmative goal, rather than an
unfortunate necessity? Why is it somehow worse to get the money
out of defense spending cuts—of which progressives are supposed
to be fond?—than from the tax hikes of which they are also fond?

Personally, if we could avoid raising taxes by cutting the
military 100%, I'd be ecstatic. I don't actually think that would
be prudent, of course, so in practice I'd oppose. But I don't
hear progressives making the argument that cutting the military
will leave us dangerously undefended. So I'm confused about
what the beef is.

Likewise, the plaints that this is going to tank the economy are
wildly overblown. As
Josh Barro points out, the cuts are heavily backloaded. The
cuts in 2012 are $22 billion, or a little more than a tenth of
one percent of GDP. You have to start assuming very high
multipliers indeed to think that there will be any impact
indistinguishable from statistical noise in the economic data.

The deal does not go nearly far enough towards resolving our real
fiscal problems: the growing burden of entitlements, and an
inefficient tax system loaded with distortionary tax preferences.
On the other hand, I don't think there was ever much chance that
it was going to. Deficit reduction and fiscal reform are not
going to occur overnight. It is going to be a series of painful
confrontations and unpleasant choices. This is a decent start.

That said, while I'm basically pleased with the deal, I am not
pleased by the way the GOP got us here. Holding the debt ceiling
hostage has threatened our credit rating, and further eroded the
already dangerously frayed institutional bonds that keep
Washington running.

I know, I know—you don't want Washington to keep running. But if
history is any guide, the Democrats are going to eventually
retaliate with something even more extreme—and then the very
people saying they despise collegiality and business as usual
will be found in my inbox and my comments section, moaning that
this unprecedented breach of tradition is the End of Democracy.
And I warn you now, I am apt to be very peeved with those
people.